We were Franced!

Last Saturday we spent a beautiful day in Paris making train reservations.  You may be thinking "Train reservations? but I though they had a Eurail pass."  Well you're correct, we do have a Eurail pass, however, it doesn't seem quite as great as it sounds.  According to the Eurail website, reservation fees should be no more than 25 USD.  They lie.  Our reservations fee totaled 360 euros. We were not happy to hear this number especially after working all day to find the answer. 

We left our hotel around 9 am and walked to the nearest train station, Gare Lyon (it was a good 30 minute walk each way.)  When we arrived, we searched for the Eurail Office that was listed in the Eurail book.  Well low and behold, the office doesn't exist.  We asked several different people about the office and we were directed to the ticket booths every time.  

We decided to give the ticket booths a try.  The lady didn't speak English very well, and we weren't sure she understood our request.  When she told us it was going to cost 216 euros to get to Madrid we said "Forget it."

We left Gare Lyon and decided to call the German train office which, according to Eurail, should have been able to make all of our reservations for us over the phone.  It didn't work. The recording said the number was busy and then hung up our call.  We tried several times to no avail.  

We decided to try a second train station.  At Gare du Nord we found all of the ticket counters under construction and no employees.  By this time it was about 2 in the afternoon.  I was very angry that this task was consuming our day, and  I was worried that we were never going to leave Paris.

Our only option was to try a third train station.  We arrived at Saint Lazare hoping for the best. We lucked out!  Our attendant was very nice, she spoke English, and she was able to make all of our reservations. 

In short, the Eurail pass has not been as convenient as I was hoping for.  Oh well, we did what we needed to do, and now we are in Madrid!

More to come soon!